Supply chain strategy permeates Myer, its leader says, who has declared the complete makeover of the retail empire is on
Supply chain strategy permeates Myer, its leader says, who has declared the complete makeover of the retail empire is on track.
Prakash Menon, Myer’s Director of Supply Chain, has revealed details of one of the largest logistics projects the Australian retail space has ever seen in an interview with SupplyChain Review.
Supply chain strategy has been a major factor in the turnaround of the company since splitting from the Coles group under the control of global private equity player the Texas Pacific Group. Myer recently announced a net profit of $83 million for the first half of the financial year, up 5.3 percent on the corresponding period.
Not only did the new management have to build a new logistics network separate from Coles’ facilities (it had just two years to transition out of Coles from the date of the business separation), it had to engineer a wholesale cultural change to transform a business function everyone acknowledges was not given the attention it needed under the old regime.
“We had to clearly understand what the new Myer supply chain stood for,” Menon tells SupplyChain Review.
The business now has four new national distribution centres — moving out of and consolidating dozens of different sites — with an improved technology platform and procurement strategy that Menon says is delivering results.
“In recent years in Australia there have been few supply chain development programs that genuinely contemplate transformational change, let alone outperform stakeholder expectations of investment, timing and benefits with zero disruption to business continuity,” he says.
“Myer is a standout example of the successful integrated planning and delivery of a multi-dimensional development program.”
More on Myer’s supply chain strategy in the June-July edition of SupplyChain Review magazine, out this week.